Pushkar and Jaipur

---

Hello readers! Well it has been an eventful few days- less in India actually than back home! I have been accepted to medical school! After all those years! Will start at Leicester medical school in Sept, very exciting. And expensive...makes me want to spend less here! Also... James and me are getting our own flat! He and his parents are buying a place as an investment, and we get to live in it! And decorate it how we want! Exciting. So lots of things to look forward to planning when i get back!!

Meanwhile in India... my time in Pushkar was ok. I know loads of tourists love the place but for me the magic was kind of lost in the hundreds and hundreds of tourist stalls. I mean you get shops everywhere for tourists but not usually such a high concentration in a small town. I didnt really get any spiritual feeling from the place as many do, alothough I did have a rather nice walk up this hill to give great vistas of the place. I was in a work-in-progress hotel out of the centre, in the countryside basically, surrounded by the flower fields (grown for religious ceremonies). And it was really nice, although there was this one vicious monkey that would always scare me when i walked past a particular tree. Given that I got bitten by a monkey in Kenya I am perhaps a little more catious around the creatures than many but this one really was bad- he would bare his teeth, growl and wave his arms. Once he threw something at me!! I ran!

At the train station of Ajmer (needed to get to pushkar) I had a rather unfortunate incident involving the she-wee! There was no lights in the toilet and I didnt think I would manage very well. So I thought I would leave the door a bit open (for the light) and use the shewee. Alright, until someone tried to open the door, I reached up to stop it and... well I got changed after!! So, you have been warned about sudden movements when using a shewee!

Now in Jaipur, arrived the other day. This city is HUGE! Actually went to the tourist office for once when i arrived and booked on a (very cheap!) tour. It wasn't so much a tour for me (the guide only spoke Hindi for the 'guide' part, the cheap tours are mostly for indian tourists) as cheap transport to most of the sites, very good value. I paid 300 INR fdor the whole day but i think tuk-tuks would easily have cost 1000INR- since some of the forts and stuff are miles out. Saw pretty much everything, and went to missed places this morn.

So whats next? Agra train in 3 hours. Taj Mahal tomorrow! Should be ace!

---